Christians must oppose torture

8:46 PM,
Apr. 1, 2013

Written by

Stephen Mansfield
For USA TODAY

In the 1950s and early 1960s, trend-setting comedian Lenny Bruce often said, "If Jesus had been killed 20 years ago, Catholic schoolchildren would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses."

Bruce was right that any device used to kill Jesus Christ in any age would have become a symbol, of both divine judgment and divine deliverance, to the faithful. What Bruce did not get right was his assumption that the cross of the first century was equal to the electric chair of the 20th, that both were meant only to execute. The truth is that the cross was a Roman tool of torture ...